Archimedes tried to figure a way to tell real gold from fake, as the king suspected that the craftsman was slipping in silver to replace then pure gold he wanted for his crown.. when he noticed that the water in his bath rose, he figured a way to test density of objects, and he allegedly rushed through the streets saying eureka, I have found it. gold rush in California must have heard success and it is emblazoned on the state seal of California. The religious opponents of Jesus murmur/complain publically that Jesus eats with tax collectors, a poor occupation, right along with being a shepherd. (contempt/grudging for others fortune compared to ours old story of the farmer and his neighbor gets double.) Don't make the opponents supercilious judgers, as we think that birds of a feather flock together and that runninbg around with a bad crowd affects us.

 

We get a glimpse into the view of heaven. Reformed orthodoxy would say that God has every right to have any number of the lost or saved souls. Jesus has a different view. Heaven celebrates when the lost are found. Here, the shepherd risks the other 99 in an attempt to find the one lost one. Is that sensible?  Issues of punishment seem to fade in the face of someone being found. The woman loses about $50 of $500. Is it worth the fuss? the image of the elder brother in the great prodigal son story starts to enter our awareness. He cannot yell eureka. Part of us may want the lost to stay lost. 

Men don;t like to even admit that they are lost. With both girls in college, I remember some classes where I did not have a clue what we were doing and looking around stunned that some knew what we were doing. At the same time, i remember the stark terror when they would run off or hide in the men's pants, and I didn't know where they were. Fred Craddock in Luke asks us to imagine if we are being addressed or if we are there with Jesus, but with the tax collectors. Where do we identify with those grumbling about all the effor texpended toward the  lesser, even no-accounts? With Amazing Grace, when are we lost and found? When are we blind; when are we sighted? Jesus wants both the religious and the tax collectors in the party. Are sinners of value? The temptation for the good people of church is to downplay the celebration of a sinner being saved. Heaven celebrates that the healthy remain so, but to see a cure, to see a sinner find their way, is worth a party.

 

Jeremiah is utterly lost, so that the whole fabric of the world is in collapse. nothing makes sense. He sees the collapse of Jerusalem as a collapse of the order of the whole world, as if creation had gone backward into chaos, into utter disorder, even nothingness. Still, even with the doom and destruction ,the end product will not be total or final. God will still find a way to move forward. I like the old process theology slogan that "in God nothing worth saving will be lost."  Everything seems to be falling apart, or I'm at the end of my rope may get at the sense of it. If we extend Jeremiah to our own time, then we are all lost at some time or another. A parable can produce a eureka moment. for me it is the realization that as soon as we judge someone as of little value, as being outside the scope of God's grace, that puts us on the outside looking in. From God's point of view, we are all on the outside looking in sometimes, all lost or misplaced, and God is trying to keep us together, safe and sound.